This article was first published in The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, Spring 2012 issue. Though I am currently shooting color negative (due to the demise of Ektachrome in 2013) Film Ferrania is on track to manufacture a new color reversal film stock within the next year.
AT THIS MOMENT
I’m a committed color reversal filmmaker. I started shooting
Super 8mm when I was twelve. At twenty, I discovered 16mm Kodachrome. Sometime
later, I made a private commitment to explore the film medium until the end of
my time here on earth.
Owning the simple, quality tools of amateur moviemaking
(wind‐up camera, non-scratching projector, hot splicer, etc.) is easier today
than when I started. They’re unobtrusive fixtures in my life and were built to
last. Their effect on the psyche is far-reaching, however. The need to make
films frequently springs to life in a reverie of hedonism, so much that even
food or sex can’t compete. Projecting a color reversal original induces a
superb high or, if you’re lucky, hallucinations.
I relish the anxiety of waiting for the film to come back from the lab and still get butterflies when I thread up a new roll. I can’t explain what kind of films I make. I’m an amateur with a day job. My films are public displays of affection.
Nearly ninety years after the advent of 16mm, I am aware how strange this lifestyle may seem. There are other mediums better suited to graphic imagery, but the sensual qualities of color reversal are what free my imagination. The definition of boring is trying to capture how the world really looks; capturing how it feels from an ecstatic state is profoundly interesting.
The ability to shoot, project, and edit from the same roll is a marvel of portability and economy. To work with color reversal is to sculpt elements forged in the explosions of distant stars at bargain‐basement prices. In skilled hands, color reversal film doesn’t have to resort to trickery. One of its gifts is a gritty, but otherworldly, perspective.
I relish the anxiety of waiting for the film to come back from the lab and still get butterflies when I thread up a new roll. I can’t explain what kind of films I make. I’m an amateur with a day job. My films are public displays of affection.
Nearly ninety years after the advent of 16mm, I am aware how strange this lifestyle may seem. There are other mediums better suited to graphic imagery, but the sensual qualities of color reversal are what free my imagination. The definition of boring is trying to capture how the world really looks; capturing how it feels from an ecstatic state is profoundly interesting.
The ability to shoot, project, and edit from the same roll is a marvel of portability and economy. To work with color reversal is to sculpt elements forged in the explosions of distant stars at bargain‐basement prices. In skilled hands, color reversal film doesn’t have to resort to trickery. One of its gifts is a gritty, but otherworldly, perspective.
Yet I have doubts about cinema and myself. Is it wrong to
dedicate oneself to the pursuit of beauty while there is so much ugliness and
injustice in the world? Using film today is a willful partnership with
uncertainty. It’s a corporeal dance with death but without the glamour. And I
do understand the appeal of digital technology. Being a simulation of the
corporeal, it affords some protection from doubt and a hint of immortality.
Making a print is the beginning of a more grown‐up effort, as my role shifts from pleasure seeker to preservationist. I do it because I’d like to share my work with a wider public. Someday I may project only my originals, accepting that they may be quickly destroyed. For now I accept the less‐than‐perfect materials we’ve been given.
Kodak’s Color Internegative II film (32/7272) is a high‐resolution print stock designed for low‐contrast color reversal originals. Yet a large majority of 16mm films have been made on projection contrast original, particularly those of interest to archives. In my work, every shot should be timed for maintenance—no change in color balance, no density correction, no scene matching. For this reason, I have learned to time my originals by eye, at least as a way of communicating my desires to the lab’s timer.
Making a print is the beginning of a more grown‐up effort, as my role shifts from pleasure seeker to preservationist. I do it because I’d like to share my work with a wider public. Someday I may project only my originals, accepting that they may be quickly destroyed. For now I accept the less‐than‐perfect materials we’ve been given.
Kodak’s Color Internegative II film (32/7272) is a high‐resolution print stock designed for low‐contrast color reversal originals. Yet a large majority of 16mm films have been made on projection contrast original, particularly those of interest to archives. In my work, every shot should be timed for maintenance—no change in color balance, no density correction, no scene matching. For this reason, I have learned to time my originals by eye, at least as a way of communicating my desires to the lab’s timer.
My sainted lab graciously humors me with a special
internegative treatment: the lightest post-flashing combined with a 1.5 stop
pull process. This is one bit of trickery that works and will greatly expand
the limits of shadow detail, without compromising density. Shadows are the
hinterlands where a large part of the magic of reversal occurs. Nathaniel
Dorsky takes it even further. For him, a print can never be more than a facsimile.
His reversal‐based films are edited to the qualities of the facsimile, not the original.
He makes an internegative of many times more footage than the finished film and
chooses only those shots that “translate” for the final cut.
A movie camera and body working in tandem can channel the subconscious. One could not set out to invent this rarified system on purpose. Its very lack of sophistication demands that you mean what you shoot and shoot what you mean. This is a form that exists at this particular moment, on this particular planet, due to an impossible confluence of factors.
Like many, I mourned the death of Kodachrome. My Bolex and I became one with it over the years. I almost never used my light meter with it. Kodachrome was the standard by which other films were judged. Its colors were forged in molten steel, and its blacks were more alive with shape and dimension than any 3‐D production.
Kodak then gave us Ektachrome 100D (7285)—a modern, “T‐Grain” emulsion. It is a happy film stock at first, and I’ve had to struggle to pull up the stakes of Kodachrome’s moodiness. But the initial amusement‐park rendition is not superficial; there’s a youthful wisdom there, in contrast to the stoicism of Kodachrome. I’ve learned to coax 7285’s subtleties to the fore. And I believe, as Stan Brakhage once told me, they are my subtleties—particularities of color that belong to no one else. This is one of them most profound mysteries of film, and it cuts across all genres: how so many people can use similar materials yet come up with such an infinitely shifting palate of possibilities. I guess that would be the definition of art.
I believe that as filmmakers, audiences, and preservationists, it is always in our interest to vocalize those ideas that might get us branded as “artsy,” “impractical,” and “crazy.” In years to come, these ideas will be more important. I hope it won’t be too late. I’m heartened to see a few younger people discovering the sensual delights of vinyl records, black‐and‐white photography, and filmmaking after having known only a simulated reality. After all, a life without a little hedonism is hardly worth living.
A movie camera and body working in tandem can channel the subconscious. One could not set out to invent this rarified system on purpose. Its very lack of sophistication demands that you mean what you shoot and shoot what you mean. This is a form that exists at this particular moment, on this particular planet, due to an impossible confluence of factors.
Like many, I mourned the death of Kodachrome. My Bolex and I became one with it over the years. I almost never used my light meter with it. Kodachrome was the standard by which other films were judged. Its colors were forged in molten steel, and its blacks were more alive with shape and dimension than any 3‐D production.
Kodak then gave us Ektachrome 100D (7285)—a modern, “T‐Grain” emulsion. It is a happy film stock at first, and I’ve had to struggle to pull up the stakes of Kodachrome’s moodiness. But the initial amusement‐park rendition is not superficial; there’s a youthful wisdom there, in contrast to the stoicism of Kodachrome. I’ve learned to coax 7285’s subtleties to the fore. And I believe, as Stan Brakhage once told me, they are my subtleties—particularities of color that belong to no one else. This is one of them most profound mysteries of film, and it cuts across all genres: how so many people can use similar materials yet come up with such an infinitely shifting palate of possibilities. I guess that would be the definition of art.
I believe that as filmmakers, audiences, and preservationists, it is always in our interest to vocalize those ideas that might get us branded as “artsy,” “impractical,” and “crazy.” In years to come, these ideas will be more important. I hope it won’t be too late. I’m heartened to see a few younger people discovering the sensual delights of vinyl records, black‐and‐white photography, and filmmaking after having known only a simulated reality. After all, a life without a little hedonism is hardly worth living.
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